Description

Rob speaks with Sally Needham, a Development and Performance Culture Lead at Sheffield United Football Club.Sally spent 13 years at The FA within the skills programme and then as a county coach developer and holds the UEFA A Licence and the Advanced Youth Award (5-11). Sally is a Thrive Practitioner, where she has taken the latest in neuroscience, child development and attachment theory and applied it into football. Along with being a Coach Developer for The FA and Consultant at 4Growth, she is currently at UCLAN doing a Professional Doctorate in Elite Performance.    

Sally and Rob discuss her journey to being a child development specialist working in football, her position in Sheffield United, how modern psychological science is applied practically in coaching and techniques that are used with young people to nurture them as balanced human beings as well as footballers.  

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Through a job at Barnsley College helping with coaching and a healthy interest in football, Sally took a Sport and Exercise Science Degree at Leeds Metropolitan University.
• Sally fully learned her trade in coaching working with the 5-11 age group for the Advanced Youth Award.
• After gaining an interest in the psychological and social aspect of young peoples development, Sally studied brain development, child development, attachment theory and modern neuroscience and is currently studying for her Doctorate in Elite Performance.
• Sheffield United’s mantra is ‘Outrun, Outfight, Outplay’.  
• Having the backing of the best people at Sheffield has allowed Sally to implement her psychological knowledge to the coaching of young players.
• Sally explains the science to her students, demonstrates the benefit in football and then practically applies it.
• With dysregulation, our thinking, behaviour, heart rate and breathing can become erratic. We might feel panic or depression out of nowhere, or our emotions can suddenly explode and flood us with adrenaline (the fight/flight response).
• Sheffield has adopted the techniques for training that the knowledge of science offers and applied it to their development plans for young players including psychological techniques previously and traditionally untried in youth football arena.

BEST MOMENTS 

‘At the time there were only two or three females in the country tutoring so I went in down that route and started tutoring when I was about 22 or 23 which was quite unique at the time being female and quite young still.’ – Sally

‘It’s a great story and its littered with characters from the game; Pete Sturgess. I’ve watched Pete coach and and I can’t tell you, for me, a better relater to young players than I’ve seen with him.’ - Rob

‘I think the biggest thing for us, and I say this quite a lot, is you can give people the ingredients but if they haven’t got the recipe then they’re only going to hit so far.’ – Sally

‘I think sometimes we perceive it that the boys are not going to buy into it, but a lot of the lads when they do it really enjoy it.’ – Sally

‘When you do fist bumps or thumbs up or checking in and checking out, it’s a big indicator that if a child wants a fist bump and the next three weeks doesn’t want any bodily contact it’s a red flag. So it gives us an understanding of what’s going off in that child.’ – Sally

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Leader Manager Coach Podcast   

ABOUT THE HOST

Rob Ryles is a UEFA A licensed coach with a League Managers Association qualification and a science and medicine background. He has worked in the football industry in Europe, USA and Africa; at International, Premiership, League, Non-League and grassroots levels with both World Cup and European Championship experience

Rob Ryles prides himself on having a forward thinking and progressive approach to the game built through his own experience as well as lessons learned from a number of highly successful managers and coaches.

The Leader Manager Coach Podcast is where we take a deep dive examining knowledge, philosophies, wisdom and insight to help you lead, manage and coach in football, sport and life.

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